Category: Other

Articles that don’t fit in to any other categories.

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Discovering a Cross Site Scripting Attack

As any good free-lance web developer does, I was browsing my competition’s portfolio earlier this evening.  I was curious as to how the layout was done on one of their client’s web pages, so I opened the source.  Near the bottom, there were probably 100 links injected into the page.  It turns out that they were the victim of a cross-site scripting attack.

I immediately notified the owner, but I’m still pretty excited that I made a discovery like this.  You hear about cross-site scripting attacks all the time, but I’ve never actually discovered one.

For those interested, the site in question is:  http://www.skydivecms.com/

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Contributing to Ubuntu

After dragging my feet on open source contribution for some time, I’ve decided to get actively involved with Ubuntu.  I’m going to start by learning how to package different things, and then go from there.  I would eventually like to get a new package into the next version of Ubuntu, but I think starting small would be great too 🙂

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Return

As the job prospects in my neck of the woods are few and far between, I will most likely be returning to grad school this spring.  While it isn’t best situation, it is currently the best choice I have to make ends meet and further my career.  I won’t be taking my grad assistant-ship back either.  It was far too time consuming and did little to further me as a person or as a software developer.  I have instead opted for contracting through various people with hopes that it may eventually become a full time thing.

Wish me luck!

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The Coming Weeks

The coming weeks are going to be big at Re-Cycled Air.  I hope to get the following things done:

  • Form an legitimate LLC through the State of Michigan. (Sole proprietorship is too risky)
  • Get a federal tax id number so that I can sub contract work if necessary (fingers crossed).
  • Track down as many free-lance jobs as possible.
  • Start a business bank account with said tax id.
  • Create a business plan.
  • Create a contract template for use with jobs.
  • Find a good way to manage jobs (Trac server?)
  • Find a good way to manage invoices (Paypal?)
  • Land a few contracts.

That being said, if you need any help with web design / web programming, drop me a line.

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Still waiting…. but this time with a measure of patience!

I’ve been waiting for over 3 weeks to hear back from IBM.  I eventually heard from them, when they apologized for taking so long.  All this is understandable as they interviewed a TON of people.  The good news is that they want to offer me a job!  They bad news, is that they can’t give me my offer yet because of corporate red-tape.  It has to finalized, stamped, copied in triplicate, etc, etc.  Either way, I’m very excited to see what they have to offer.

I also got an interesting call today from MSU.  I applied for a position as a web developer there almost a month ago, and got a call to interview today.  I was caught off guard, so I hope I didn’t sound not-interested.  I have an interview with them on 12/15.  I look forward to hearing about the position, hopefully answering some interesting questions, and seeing what they have to offer.  While I doubt they can match IBM’s pay scale, they have other incentives like tuition reimbursement and then like, which make a job there very enticing.

Also, along a different line, I created a URL shortener the other day.  It’s called fwds.me.  It works like any other URL shortener, except faster :)*

That’s all I have for now.  I’ll leave an update when I’ve made some job decisions.

*It’s probably not faster, but it’s at least as fast as most other shorteners.  I use Apache mod_rewrite to handle the url, and then a quick sql query to find out the original URL.

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Waiting

For the past 5.5 years I’ve been in college.  Yes, that long.  After 4.5 years, I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from Central Michigan University.  From that point I thought that it would be prudent to go to grad school.  This was a big mistake.  As it turns out, I never really had much interest in continuing my education formally after my undergrad.  So, 3 weeks ago I resolved to get a big person job (scary!).

As it would happen, a Fortune 500 company (actually, it’s in the top 15) was looking for 50 or so candidates for it’s new center in the Lansing area.   They had recruiters on campus, and as soon as I told them I was looking for work, was a grad student, and had loads of external experience, they seemed interested.

I was invited down to Lansing for a “meet and greet” event at their new center.  Things went well, and one of the recruiters made a point to introduce me the head of center to me.  I consider this a good thing.  After that, I was invited down a week later for a round of interviews with the company.  The interviews went extremely well, and I feel like I’ll get a call back (keeping the fingers crossed!).

They were looking to fill 50 positions, and they were interviewing 70 people.  Assuming that they realistically can fill 20 positions, those are still very good odds for getting a job.  They said it could take up to 2 weeks to get a call back (for good or bad).  Now I’m waiting.  Impatiently at that.

Waiting to find out what the rest of your life will bring is nerve-wracking.  I have no more fingernails left and I have to admit I’m kind of boring to be around.  I can’t get it out of my mind.  Working for this company would be great: interesting projects, smart co-workers, new technologies.  Oh yeah, and money + benefits.  I haven’t had health insurance in 5 years.  Going to the doctor when I get sick would be swell.  A new car might be nice too if I have to commute (VW Golf TDI!).

But for now, I wait.

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$25 Amazon Gift Certificate

ShoulIGetTheBook.com is giving away a $25 gift certificate just for entering a review on their site.   The odds of winning are good now (only 5 or six people have registered), so i suggest checking it out here.

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Geocities : Salvaged

As much as it pains me to look at, I decided to salvage one of the earlier web pages that I ever made.  I have long since forgot earlier web pages, but “The NannyMUD Guide” really stood out to me because it was my first serious effort at web development.

It’s nasty sure (big crappy flash animations, talking to myself, awful menu design, crap color scheme,…), but it was an important to me then.  Click the link below to check it out.

The NannyMUD Guide

Edit:  I’ve been asked for a quest walk-through for NannyMUD.  Click here to download it.